


Never Come Back

by MarvelThalia (LaughingThalia)



Category: Need for Speed (Movie 2014)
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-06 15:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10337712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaughingThalia/pseuds/MarvelThalia
Summary: ---Tobey and Dino are both out of prison and have been signed to the same racing company, how will the boys fair having to spend so much time in close proximity, when they haven't had a real conversation since they were 22.---





	1. Come With Me...

**Author's Note:**

> Please note I'm not big on racing I took some libraries in describing how the racing industry works... by 'some' I mean 'all'.

****

Set before the movie in like early-mid 2000s  
Anything said about this time was said about the  
early to mid 2000s.  
Please don't take anything said personally,  
it is fiction after all.

“Tobey! I have great news!” Dino practically breezed into Tobey's dad's garage in search of the other boy.

Tobey pulled himself out from underneath a car “What is it Dino?”

“I got signed! They want me on for the juniors Mercedes team in California!”

“California?” Tobey tried to sound excited, he really did, but California was a long way away.

“Yeah! It'll be great! They're sorting out accommodations so we can stay there pretty much rent free as long as I race, and while we're up there, they're sure to see how great you are so maybe they'll sign you too!”

“I'd...I'd go with you?” 

“Yeah. I mean if- if you want to.” 

“We'd be... a couple?”

“Um well maybe not... you know...”

“Officially.”

“Yeah. You know how it is Tobey. Gay racers never make it past the rookie stage.”

“Well we're not gay!”

“No one takes Bisexuality seriously, come on Tobes. It's the same reason why we can't tell anyone here, the same reason we can't even tell your dad!”

“Tell me what?”

They both looked up to see Tobey's dad standing in the door frame. “Dad!” Tobey exclaimed at the same time Dino yelled “Mr Marshells!”

“Sorry boys, did I scare you? I smelt that you two were up to something and thought I'd come check it out. What are you boys up to?”

“ I...I got signed. I was asking Tobey if he wanted to-” _'come with me'_ “-be part of my crew.”

“Oh that's great Dino, congratulations! So Tobey are you going to?”

“I don't know yet. I'll have to think about it.”

“Well I'll leave you boys to sort that out then.” And he was already out the door on his way to the house.

“Why don't you want to come with me?” Dino asked.

“It's not that I don't. But I'd like it if we could go as us.”

“Well we can't.”

“It's not that we can't, it's that you won't. You're just too afraid.”

“Tobey this is my career, my life we're talking about.”

“I thought it was our life! Our life together.”

“We will be together!”

“Just that no one will know.” He muttered scornfully.

“What do you want me to do?!”

“I want you to tell people we're dating!”

“Well I already said that I can't!”

“Well then choose! Either we go to California as a couple, an official couple; or we're over.”

“What?! Tobey you can't expect me to make that call!”

“I can and I do.”

“Racing has been my life since I was a kid! My dad-”

“Your dad taught you to drive a car when you were 9 years old, I know! And I'm sorry you had to grow up without him, But you have a choice. It's either me or racing.”

Dino didn't answer, at least not verbally. He looked at the other man helplessly, his mouth floundering around uselessly, trying to say words that wouldn't come.

“You're choosing racing.” It wasn't a question. Tobey could tell.

“Tobey please don't make me choose.” And Dino had tears in his eyes, actual tears. His voice cracked.

“You've clearly made your choice. If you're not prepared to go on the record stating you love me, then how can I ever believe that you do. Good bye Dino.” And then Tobey walked out of his own shop.

Dino stood in the empty garage for a full five minutes before he had stopped crying and started thinking of what he should do. He needed to get out. Out of the garage, out of town, out of the state.  
He needed to go to California and focus on his racing, that was all the mattered. That's what his dad would have wanted.

\- - - - - - -

Dino sat in the first meeting of the junior racers and listened to his new boss give instructions on what they can and can't do on and off the track. “And our last rule, is a rule that you should never reveal, a rule that isn't on the official rule book: Get yourself a girl to kiss you at the finish line. You don't actually have to be dating, but she has to be willing to give you a big smooch when you come top three and a supportive peck if you rank bottom, and she has to be at least a 7.”

“Why?” he found himself asking much to his own horror.

“Why?” The man repeated “Because that's what people like. I have my stats guys run the numbers and it's proven that racers with explicit romantic female support have more people cheering them on.”

So later that day Dino had called up Anita, she was Tobey's ex-girlfriend. By ex he meant they dated in 7th grade until she realised that Tobey was in love with Dino. She was the only one who knew about the two of them, and so she would be the perfect person to call to play his fake girlfriend.

To his delight she said yes, of course she was only too happy to get out of town and have a friend and a free place to stay waiting outside for her.


	2. ...I Begged You To Come With Me.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old wounds are reopened.  
> Old arguments resumed.  
> Old flames relit.

\- - - - - - -  
Set after the movie

Since both Dino and Tobey had gotten out of prison and back into the racing game, annoyingly enough under the same team, they had made an unspoken agreement to just ignore each other. They tried to never be in the same room as one another, apart from team meetings and never got on the track together outside of official races. Because of this (and prison), they hadn't talked in just over 2 years, even though they saw each other almost every day, neither one even said 'hello'.

They had just finished a race in which Dino had come third, Tobey second and a man named Peter Jones had come first and were conducting their group interview panel were they sat from left to right Tobey, Peter and Dino. A faceless, nameless reporter asked “Tobey Marshell, you and Dino Brewster grew up together in the same town. Giving how much you seem to hate him was that particularly hard?”

Tobey scoffed “Funnily enough me and Dino used to be-” _'boy friends'_ “- really good friends.”

“What?” The reporter seems shocked, forgetting she was still on mic.

“Oh yeah, 8th grade to the age of 22, me and Dino were best friends, then we had a huge argument never made up and he went off and became a big shot racer.”

“A huge argument _you_ started.” Dino grumbled quietly, although the mic picked it up.

Tobey's head snapped in his direction and he had the biggest _'Excuse me, WHAT?'_ face “An argument _you_ escalated out of proportion.”

“ _I_ escalated it?! You were the one being an unreasonable little-”

Peter cut them off with an awkward cough, reminding them that they weren't alone and people (mainly their boss) would be very mad about this.

But Tobey was never one to care about little things like that “I think I was being perfectly reasonable.”

“Says the man who's apparently still angry about it after 10 fucking years!”

“You were the one who made this into an argument, again!”

Dino sighed “Whatever, I'm not having this conversation , _again_.”

\- - - - - - -

“What the heck was that?” Dino asked loudly once they were off the stage and away from the cameras.

A few fresher racers, Peter Jones, the crew and some of the other staff all looked around awkwardly as they ended their own conversations abruptly.

“That was me telling the truth you asshole, something you're clearly not used to! I gave you a choice-”

“You gave me an ultimatum! I had to look out for myself.”

“Oh like fucking always!”

“Don't act like you're so perfect!”

“I never said I was! I just said that you were an asshole!” Tobey yelled. A few people decided they'd leave the room and give those two some privacy, clearly this argument was long overdue. “What ever happened to you not having this conversation again? Another lie?!”

“Well I wasn't going to but it's clear that after 10 years, 4 of which were spent in jail your memory isn't what it used to be.”

“Four years because of you!”

That seemed to subdue Dino a bit. His eyes flickered away from Tobey's intense glare and to the floor, “We're talking about the argument we had ten years ago, nothing else.”

“The argument we had ten years ago spiralled into every other argument we've had since then.”

Dino huffed, looked round the room and saw everyone trying to look like they weren't listening to their conversation; he huffed again, grabbed Tobey's wrist and dragged him off to a smaller room “Come on.”

Tobey snatched his arm away like he'd been struck by lightning but he followed him anyway.

“What is your problem? Your _real_ problem now that we're alone.”

“You _left_ me!” Tobey yelled.

“I left you? Have you forgotten how I begged you to come with me? How you walked away from us? _You_ broke up with _me_ Tobey not the other way around!”

“You might as well have!”

“Tobey, I asked you, begged you even, to come with me to California!”

“But you didn't want to me to go as me. You didn't want to go as us to go as a clear unchallenged _us_.”

“I wasn't ready.”

“I know. I wasn't either. We were young, we were both stupid and impulsive and we lived for the adrenaline rush, we still do.”

“Are you really still mad because I left you?”

“No. I'm mad because you never came back for me.” Tobey said, barely above a whisper.

Dino stepped closer to him, “I wanted to. I wanted to so badly, but I could never bring myself to face being rejected by you again.”

“I wouldn't have rejected you.”

Dino leaned in slowly, boxing Tobey in, and although the action was done in a non-threatening way they both looked absolutely terrified. “Can I kiss you?” He asked softly.

“Yeah.” Tobey whispered back, breathily.

The kiss started off chastely, all softness and caution and years of hating each other holding them back but the moment Tobey's hands buried themselves in Dino's over-gelled hair all bets were off. Dino pushed him against the wall and deepened the kiss, all passion and fire and years of want, finally coming to fruition.

Dino's hands run up and down the other racer's body, Tobey was constantly pulling him closer even though they were already as close as possible, Tobey needed Dino like a drowning man needed oxygen, he kissed him like he was a drowning man and Dino _was_ oxygen.

But a motion at the door had them leaping apart, the door opened to reveal none other than first place racer Peter Jones. He took in the two red-faced slightly panting figures and assumed they had been fighting “Hey um Dino, the boss man's looking for you.”

“Right. Thanks.” Dino gives Tobey a glance as he leaves. A glance Tobey can't quite decipher.

As soon as the door had closed Peter slung an arm around Tobey “Ha! No one's looking for him. What a jerk, right?”

Tobey, still caught up in the passionate kiss they had just shared replied with a “Yeah. Right.”

“What did he say to you anyways? You seem really rattled.”

“Don't worry about it.”

“Okay, just don't do anything stupid okay?”

Tobey smiled out the window “I think I already have.” And then he left the winner standing alone in the room completely baffled as to what the heck had just happened.


	3. Bitter Enemies Till The End...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone had been watching them through the window. Someone with a pretty good camera.

\- - - - - - - 

“Oh my God.” Tobey said so shocked he couldn't even process what was happening.”

“No comment!” Dino almost yelled at the reporter after having stood up in shock.

Peter kept looking between them repeating “What? How? _What?!_ ”

A reporter had shown them the viral video of them making out, the camera had been positioned outside their window and so had no sound but it was very clear to see what was happening when you were being shoved up against a wall and thoroughly wrecked “Oh my God!” Tobey exclaimed again as his brain finally caught up.

“Tobey, don't say a word. We're not commenting.”

“So there's a 'we'?” the reporter asked.

“I'm using it in the general sense. And still no comment.” He pushed both Peter and Tobey away from the reporter and into the racing club where they came face to face with basically everyone they worked with.

“Uuum...” Dino said awkwardly as the three top racers stumbled straight into their boss “I can explain?”

“Are you kidding! This is great!!”

“It is?” Dino and Tobey asked at the same time.

“Bitter enemies brought together by gay love and racing? It's great for publicity! You guys are gay right?”

“Bisexual.” Tobey corrected.

“Eh, close enough. This'll widened our audience a butt-load. Might get rid of the stigma that gay guys don't like racing and other manly stuff so we can sell more tickets. I'm going to set up a press conference and put out an official statement.”

“Wait what?” Tobey asked panicked “A press conference?”

“Yeah, you two star racers will be up there on camera telling anyone who will listen that racing has no sexuality.”

“You want me to blurt out my love life to a bunch of reporters?”

“Sure why not!”

“Why not? Because I haven't even told my crew yet!”

Dino looked over at him in shock “Wait, you didn't tell the crew you were bisexual?”

“It never came up!”

“Oh my God!”

“What?”

“You're an actual hypocrite!”

“What?!” He said more insulted than confused this time.

“You were on my case about telling people close to me and you haven't even told your crew.” Then his eyes widened “Oh crap! I need to call Anita.”

“Oh crap! You do need to call Anita. Actually so do I. Do you think she'll be mad?”

“I don't know, I mean she's the nicest but I'd be pissed if I were her.”

“That's because you're a vindictive little shit.” Tobey laughed.

The crowd around them waited for something to kick off, for one of them to get insulted or bring up Pete but nothing happened. Even though they were basically insulting each other neither one seemed triggered. Peter observed them quite surprised, after many many weeks of making sure they didn't rip out each other's throats it was nice to see them so at ease with each other “Man. Dino must have a magic dick.”

There was a pause.

“What?” Tobey finally asked.

“I've been keeping you two from fighting each other since you got here and now you guys are all buddy-buddy, and no offence Tobes but it's clear from the video that Dino's the top so yeah, magic dick.”

“I'll have you know-” Tobey started forcefully.

“Oh my God please don't.” Dino begged, turning red.

Peter made a face as if he was thinking “Hang on, there's a new development in the story. Tobey's the top.”

\- - - - - - - -

“Oh God! Dino!” Tobey exclaimed loudly as the man in question (Dino that is, not God) fucked him into his mattress.

The bed's creaks and groans was almost covered up by their own groans and moans but even those couldn't be stifled by the sound of his head board repeatedly smashing into the wall that just so happened to be the one they shared with Peter. Peter who was having a hard time sleeping with the sounds of two people he worked with closely having sex. The racer decided he needed to invest in some noise cancelling ear plugs because this was unfortunately not the first time this had happened since they got back together.  
He would have honestly preferred if the two were arguing over their hot, passionate and very loud sex keeping him up for just under an hour.

From all the _”Right there!”_ 's Tobey had thrown out, his first assessment had been correct and he was the bottom. God, he really wished he didn't know that. “Fuck my life.” He grumbled as he turned over and buried his head under his pillow hoping that would somehow work to silence the sounds around him.


	4. ...Until Today.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dino has gone and fucked up real bad. Or did he?

\- - - - - - - -

When Dino stumbled into the racing compound 5 minutes before the press release, smelling slightly like booze and sporting a hickey that Tobey definitely hadn't given him. Everyone at the compound assumed the worse about the hickey, including Tobey, _including Dino_ , but they didn't have time to talk about it before Brewster was swept away by hair and make-up to give him his signature high gelled hair; give him some colour so he didn't look like death warmed over; and get his clothes and the smell of alcohol off of him and then shoved on stage.

Now the media had built up a sort of rhetoric with the team over time, a rhetoric which usually consisted on asking serious questions about racing and competitions before someone asked a fun question about the happy couple, a joke question about how Peter handled being around the couple so much and then any comments on whatever mark of a good sexing one of them was sporting that day (which had started when someone had videoed Tobey wincing when he sat down) and then they would laugh at Dino's embarrassment over the subject of sex, because as confident a guy as he played it talking about it still made the guy blush right down to his neck.

So when one person asked Peter about how he dealt with the couple and he went on to tell the story of how Tobey purposely gave him hickeys that were higher than his shirt collars for the sole purpose of embarrassing him and then went on to laugh about the rather prominent hickey that make up had not been able to cover up completely in 5 minutes, Dino had winced. 

Tobey hadn't replied the way he usually would, instead crossing his arms quite defensively over his chest, Dino had been a bit more reluctant to talk about it than usual and Peter had noticed something was off and scrambled to find a new topic of conversation/line of question. This was reminding him too much of the old days where he had acted like a buffer between the two.

“Tobey, Dino, are you currently in the middle of a domestic dispute?” Some no-name blogger asked.

Dino looked over at him for the answer, because like the reporter, he didn't quite know either.

Tobey simply replied “We don't know yet. We'll see.”

Dino winced awkwardly, taking that to mean a definitive 'yes', they were in fact in the middle of an argument even if no words about it had been exchanged yet. It was a small mercy when the conference finally ended.

Tobey stood up as soon as the cameras (had said they) were off and was almost out the door before Dino had even had the chance to stand up, peter intercepted him “Man what the heck did you do?”

Dino sighed “I really messed up.” And then he ran after his possibly ex-boyfriend to apologise and unfortunately explain.

\- - - - - - - -

They had just finished an official race, Tobey had come first this time with Peter coming in second and Dino just inches behind in third place. Since the 'falling out', as the media had so creatively dubbed it, the two hadn't been quite as tense as they were before they had made up but something had clearly happened and most people were too afraid to ask what.

As they were giving their post race addresses to the camera a woman stumbled past security and onto the cam, in range of the microphone “Dino!”

Dino took one look at the woman and his eyes filled with horror, they darted from Tobey and then back to the woman “Cecilia?! What are you doing here!?”

“You all need to know something very important.” She said, standing up straight, face twisted in a way that said she didn't want to say whatever she was about to say.

“I don't think they do.” Dino said clearly not wanting her to say whatever it was he thought she was going to say.

“You don't understand, I'm not here to out you as a cheater, I'm here to tell you _we never slept together_.”

“You-” Dino paused “What?!”

“You got super drunk at the club and you realised, with no prompting might I add, that you couldn't drive because of it so I said you could stay at mine for the night. We stumbled up the stairs- well mainly you, I wasn't that drunk- and then I pulled you into my bed hoping to sleep with you-”

“Woah, that's low.” Peter said almost involuntarily.

“I know!”

“So what happened?” Dino asked, wanting her to continue.

“I pulled you into my bed, you weren't really in the best position to stop me, but every time I tried to make a move you'd kind of just...slap away my hand, burrow your head in my pillow and mumbled something about Tobey.”

“You're kidding.” Tobey said, very much surprised.

“Hang on what about that hickey I got?”

“I gave it to you while you were sleeping.” She admitted ashamed.

“What about when I woke up very confused next to a random girl who was half undressed and a raging hangover asked you if we had sex and you said yes!?”

“We've already established that I'm a scummy human being. I saw my chance to be on the news as the girl you slept with and I took it, but it never hit the press and I got guilty so I'm confessing. I'm sorry Dino and you too Tobey. I'm sorry I almost ruined your relationship.”

“I didn't cheat on Tobey.” Then he turned to face the man “I didn't cheat on you!”

“Wow.” Peter said as she walked away “So that's what happened then. You both thought you had cheated on him? You guys have the weirdest relationship problems.”

Dino looked towards the man that he loved “So...?” _'Are we back together?'_

“Yeah.” _'We're back together.'_

“And to think I almost ruined us. Again.”

“You didn't almost ruin us. Not this time _or_ the last time. I love you.”

Dino grinned, they had never told each other directly that they loved the other; they had messed around with the usual '...And that's why I love you.' joke and it had been implied in every touch they had shared and all the time they had spent together but they'd never said it. “I love you too.” Until today.


	5. DELETED SCENE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A scene I didn't think fit in with the overall fic so I deleted it from the fic.
> 
> Set after Chapter 3: Bitter Enemies Till The End...
> 
> Is unfinished technically but will never be finished so in that sense it is complete.

Tobey stared out at the sea of cameras, and tried to pretend as if he was just explaining this to his crew, those faceless, nameless reporters were the crew and he was just explaining to them how he ended up with Dino after everything that had happened.

“Before, when I said Dino and I had been good friends- that was kind of a lie. Me and Dino had been boyfriends from 8th grade to the age of 22. And that argument that sort of made us enemies for 10 years it was an argument that I started and one that led to our breaking up.” He paused and looked over at Dino, unsure if he should go into detail.

A reporter answered that question for him “What was the argument about?”

“I had just been signed to the California youth Mercedes club, where pretty much all of the big names in racing have come through at some point and it was a big deal for me. I told Tobey, started banging on about all these plans to go to Cali together-”

“He didn't want to go?” The reporter asked.

“He was only too happy to come with me, he just wanted to come as my boyfriend and you know... back then... bisexuals 'weren't real' and gay racers didn't make it.” He shrugged. 

“I gave him the very stupid ultimatum of either going to California with me as his boyfriend or going to California alone-”

“-I believe you said 'or we're done'.” Dino added.

“Yes. Yes I did say that.” Tobey winced. “Very much a stupid thing to say.”

“Don't you think it was selfish of Dino to choose racing over you?”

“No not at all, I mean - I thought that at the time. I was incredibly furious, ended up wrapping a car around a lamp post because of it, but I was definitively being the selfish one in that situation. He was right, LGBT+ racers didn't make it back then and if he'd come out as such on entry level they probably would have dropped him. On top of that I knew how much racing meant to him, his father had taught him to drive, to race and it was pretty much the only thing he had left of his father. So yeah... total jerk-move on my part.”

“So have you two been in a secret affair since joining the team?”

Tobey laughed at that “I wish! No me and Dino have been about to tear each other a new one since we first set eyes on each other. Honestly we were avoiding each other as best as we could and if we ended up in an argument Peter would have to separate us before it got physical.”

“Didn't this create a hostile environment for the crew?”

Dino scoffed “No way they loved it. They watched us like we were a reality TV show. Some of the gossip around the place was actually kind of hilarious. Like if we'd both start talking at the same time and then both try to get the other to talk at the same time in an hour suddenly Tobey had tried to punch my lights out or something equally as unlikely. Some of the rumours were just straight out ridiculous.”

Tobey added “They had bets going on you know.”

“About us?”

“Nah about the man on the moon- yes about us! I can't believe you never noticed all the money being exchanged whenever we did something.”

Dino laughed “So if anything, it was a hostile environment for us!”

“If you weren't in a secret affair how did you end up kissing the other night?”

“Bringing up the argument from 10 years ago, prompted us to finally end it rather then just bringing it back every year as something different. And when all the tension was gone, I guess it just left us back where we had ended it when we were 22.” Dino looked over at Tobey and smiled in a way that hadn't been captured on camera many times.

Tobey smiled back but they were started out of their momentary bliss by Tobey's phone ringing, he checked the caller ID and his eyes widened in panic “Oh no! It's- it's you-know-who! What do I do? Do I answer it?”

“We're in the middle of a press conference!”

“Yeah but it's... you know who it is, I can't hang up on them! Can I?” before he could decide the ringing stopped. “Is that a good sign or a bad sign?”

“I honestly don't know. She could be pissed.”

“She could be happy for us.”

“I don't know... I'd be pissed. I mean we technically both dated her... and you know...all that other stuff that happened.”

The reporter coughed to get their attention having caught on who they were talking about “Mr Brewster, did you only ever propose to Anita to keep your cover of a straight man?”

“What? No! I'm not going to propose to someone for a reason as stupid as that! Look, when I started racing in the little leagues they told me if I wanted to be successful I needed a girl to kiss me at the finish line and I called Anita because she was a friend, she was one of the few people from back home who knew I was Bi plus she wanted out of town and I offered her a free place to live. But we'd been friend before and then we spent 7 years together, I don't know how you can't fall in love with someone after 7 years.” He really hoped no one brought up Pete. He'd rather talk about gay sex then talk about Pete.


End file.
